Julio Urías changes arm slots to mess with Soto, a breakdown

It's a one-run game, but there's two runners on.

Urias wants to hold him at that.

First pitch, he's going to drop in a little get-me-over curve and gets the call from Blue.

Eee, Soto doesn't know.

You sure about that, Blue?

You sure?

They say it is a strike, according to all the charts, but yeah, it looks a little high.

It comes over the plate.

Eee, I don't know.

So first pitch call, curveball, gets him the strike.

Now in the second pitch, he's going to go fastball.

He drops down to do it, and Soto looks at him like, oh, tricks.

That's what we're doing?

Okay, I see you.

I got you.

Tricks, huh?

And why he's doing that is because Urias dropped down.

You see that arm angle?

So the top one up here is the curveball.

Down here is that fastball.

He dropped down to get even to a funkier angle and then pumped 95-mile-per-hour fastball in the zone.

And Soto was a little surprised.

Fouls it off, but a little surprised.

So now he's thinking, okay, I saw the curveball, got called a strike, saw the drop-down fastball.

What's he going to throw me now?

And what's he throw him?

A change-up.

Did he swing?

Did he swing?

No.

Soto says, yeah, I didn't swing.

Uh-uh, not me.

Not me.

I wasn't swinging.

He goes, eh, eh, kind of seemed like he swung.

Maybe.

I don't know.

That probably gets called half the time.

Half the time it doesn't get called, but there's always going to be a little Soto shuffle in the mix,

whether you like it or not.

So that was the first pitch curveball.

Then the second pitch, he drops down, he goes fastball.

Third pitch, he showed him the change-up.

So he's seen all three pitches now.

And what do you have to know?

He took the curveball.

He was a little surprised on the fastball.

And the change-up almost got him.

He almost got a swing there.

He didn't get a great read on it.

So if you're Urias, and here you can see here, see the arm angle on the top two is the same

for the two off-speed pitches, and then drop-down for the fastball.

So if you're Julio, what are you going to go with here?

You're going to go back to the well on one of these pitches.

And let's see what he does.

Tries to go curveball again, and that's grounded foul, tongue out, a little sniff of the bat,

fresh burnt wood smell.

Soto likes it, reminds him he's alive, and that's why he likes hitting.

But he went back to the curveball, and now back to the fastball,

and he wanted that one pretty bad.

You can hear him say.

Puta madre.

Thank you to Joe's McFly for filling in.

Now Soto's walking around thinking, all right, okay.

That was good.

That was the fastball again.

What's he going to throw?

Soto also knows that the two fastballs he's dropped down for.

See those two arm slots lower down there?

Those are the two fastballs.

Both came in at 95 miles per hour.

Now if you go back, and we look at the other two arm slots that were higher,

those were the two off-speed, the curveball and the changeup.

So Soto knows that info, and I think he also knows

that he has to go back to the curveball.

He hasn't seen back-to-back fastballs yet, so he is sitting off-speed,

especially if he sees the arm come over the top.

And he gets a fastball, wasn't ready for it, but has skill enough to spoil it,

and now Urias just got to laugh.

Just like, are you kidding me, dude?

Because he set him up pretty good for that.

Look what he did.

He threw that fastball from the most over-the-top arm slot yet.

These were the two fastballs.

These were the two off-speed, and that fastball came from up here.

So he tried to trick him a little bit by going over the top with the fastball,

and he did trick him.

Soto wasn't ready to hit that, but he just fouled it off to stay alive.

And now does he throw three fastballs in a row, or does he go back to an off-speed?

He's got a lot of pitches to work with.

It's a one-and-two count, and he goes with a changeup that Soto doesn't swing at at all.

That's impressive.

Because this was the fastball that he just eked and spoiled,

and then the changeup comes right after that, and he spits on it.

And if you look, they talk about tunneling now.

Those two pitches come from the same arm slot, and they're going the same way for a while,

and then one of them comes inside, the other stays straight.

So good job by Soto spoiling that.

So now what's he going to do?

I think Soto, he's thinking he's going to come fastball now.

He went two fastballs.

I just spit on that changeup.

He's going to come back at me with the fastball, and Urias is saying,

I can throw anything I want here.

He's kind of been in control of this entire at-bat, and he drops a curveball right over the middle.

All Soto can do is smile.

All Urias can do is smile because it's a fun battle.

Soto's like, all right, noted, noted.

Your tricks, I have taken note.

All I can do is remember them for next time.

I love stuff like that.

Really cool.

I don't think Soto was comfortable that entire at-bat.

I think Urias had him right where he wanted him.

He was just able to foul him off because he's that good of a hitter.

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